NEWS: Sanders to Democratic Senators: Now is the Time to Address America’s Health Care Crisis

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, sent a letter to his Democratic colleagues urging them to come together around common sense health care policies to make health care more affordable and accessible for every American family, in addition to extending the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits.

“As the Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) it is my view that, at a time when the Republicans have been forced to finally talk about the health care crisis facing our country, it is essential that the Democratic Caucus unify behind a set of common sense policies that will make health care more affordable and accessible,” Sanders wrote. “The American people are paying attention. Now is the time to act.”

Despite claims from President Trump and Republicans in Congress that they want to go after what Trump refers to as “the money sucking, big bad insurance companies,” their proposals only make a bad situation worse.

Sanders continued: “Trump’s idea to send some 20 million Americans a check for, at most, $6,500 by repealing the ACA tax credits would be an absolute disaster. How is someone who needs $150,000 a year in cancer treatment going to get the care he or she needs with a $6,500 check? What is a pregnant mom supposed to do with a $6,500 check when the average cost of childbirth in America is $20,000? How is someone who has a heart attack going to be able to afford a $50,000 hospital stay with just $6,500?”

“President Trump’s absurd idea would lead to more medical bankruptcies, more unaffordable care and more Americans going without the health care they desperately need,” Sanders wrote. “At a time when the vast majority of Americans understand that our current health care system is broken, dysfunctional and cruel, we must offer serious proposals which begin to address the systemic deficiencies within American health care. We should not be defending a system which is not only, by far, the most expensive in the world, but one which numerous international studies describe as one of the worst.”

Sanders calls on his colleagues to back six broadly popular and desperately needed reforms to:

1. Extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits to prevent a doubling in premiums, on average, for 20 million Americans.
2. Repeal the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act so approximately 50,000 Americans do not have to die unnecessarily each and every year.
3. Expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing — a proposal backed by 92% of Americans.
4. Cut the cost of prescription drugs by at least 50% by requiring pharmaceutical companies to charge no more for prescriptions in America than they do in Europe or Canada — a policy that Trump says he supports.
5. Expand primary health care so Americans in every part of the country can find a local physician and avoid ending up in an emergency room or a hospital.
6. Ban stock buybacks and dividends and restrict CEO compensation to finally stand up to the greed of America’s top health care companies that made $2.7 trillion in profits between 2001 and 2022 and spent $2.6 trillion of that money on stock buybacks and dividends.

Sanders concluded: “It is my hope that we can unify our caucus in support of these policies and work together to rally the American people behind them so that they are enacted into law.”

Read the letter here.